The newly appointed Commander of Russian armed forces in Ukraine, General Surovkin, says that the situation is very tense due to heavy shelling and the evacuation of civilians.
He says that the Ukrainian forces armed with Himars rockets are firing on the city’s infrastructure and housing while the Russian forces are evacuating people and that he will ensure the safety of every single person in Kherson.
His admission of the situation caused a stir among the Russian higher-ups.
The Russian regional officer, Kirill Stremusov, warned the residents of the city of future Ukrainian attacks, and the people should take his words seriously. He also said that the people living in the city of Dnipro were the most at risk of these attacks.
These statements were also confirmed by Valdimir Saldo, the Russian-appointed Governor of the region.
Kherson was one of the largest cities that was captured by Russian forces during the initial stages of the invasion in February.
The Ukrainian forces have successfully recaptured many areas that were captured by the Russian forces during the invasion and have managed to reach 30km south of Dnipro, threatening the Russian forces there.
Kherson is the only Ukrainian regional capital that was captured during the Russian invasion, and the Kremlin now claims that Kherson and the other three Ukrainian regions are now part of the Russian Federation. The claim was rejected by the international community.
General Surovkin, who has a reputation for using harsh methods, is a veteran of the Chechenyan and Syrian Civil Wars.
He said that Ukraine’s attacks have heavily damaged the city’s Antonovsky Bridge and Kakhova hydroelectric dam, causing traffic jams and disrupting food deliveries and electricity.
He further commented that they are being constantly attacked by the Ukrainian forces in the East in the regions of Kupyansk and Lyman and in the South on the Mykolaiv-Kryvyi Rih front.
The scale of the so-called “planned” evacuation remains unclear. However, if the Russians force civilians out of their residences, then it will constitute a war crime under the UN.
Ukrainian officials in March claimed that Russians illegally deported many of their people into the shelled city of Mariupol. This constitutes a war crime as the people of an occupied region are moved to another region without their consent by the occupiers.
The lower house of the Russian Parliament, the Duma, has taken decisions regarding the relocation of civilians from Kherson. According to them, the residents of Kherson have the freedom to live in any city, town, or village within the Russian Federation and that the Russian government will provide them with the needed financial assistance.
Kherson’s population before the war was about 300,000 residents, but the Ukrainian authorities say that about half of the residents have escaped the port city.
General Surovkin is the newly appointed commander of Russia’s “special military operation”. He is nicknamed “General Armageddon.” He oversaw the Russian bombing raids in the Syrian Civil War, which caused a lot of civilian deaths, and is accused of committing human rights abuses in the Chechen Civil War.
According to Volodymyr Zelensky, he has successfully destroyed about 30% of Ukraine’s energy fields in the last eight days alone, and has caused disruptions in the supply of water and electricity in Ukraine.
